I complete disagree and believe that there a big misinterpretations here leading to poor implementation and massive confusion.
The misinterpretation that I've seen stated in many places and by Richard Eckart earlier in this thread is: XPath statement operates on the default namespace (xmlns="") From the XML 1.0 spec, I find this statement to be completely wrong. There is no such thing as "The default namespace" in a global sense. Default namespace as a term, is clearly a matter of inheritance, and I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise after reading the bit about default namespace from the XML 1.0 spec.( http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/#defaulting ) The simplest support of my interpretation is the statement in the spec: "The attribute value in a default namespace declaration /MAY/ be empty. This has the same effect, within the scope of the declaration, of there being no default namespace." I believe the implementation error is that elements that are using a default namespace are being assigned a namespace rather than being setup to inherit them. From the spec, the example for setting the empty namespace as the default namespace is: <?xml version='1.0'?> <Beers> <!-- the default namespace inside tables is that of HTML --> <table xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'> <th><td>Name</td><td>Origin</td><td>Description</td></th> <tr> <!-- no default namespace inside table cells --> <td><brandName xmlns="">Huntsman</brandName></td> <td><origin xmlns="">Bath, UK</origin></td> <td> <details xmlns=""><class>Bitter</class><hop>Fuggles</hop> <pro>Wonderful hop, light alcohol, good summer beer</pro> <con>Fragile; excessive variance pub to pub</con> </details> </td> </tr> </table> </Beers> So, logically <details xmlns="" is applying the default namespace for its children. Therefore, its children should be dependent on it supplying this default namespace. If it were to no longer supply this default namespace, then the children would logically default to the xhtml namespace. Also, if you were to take this XML document and change <details xmlns=""> to <details xmlns="urn:blah.com:blah"> and reparse the document then of course the children are now in the new default namespace. I am of the opinion that if you were to programatically change the namespace on this nodes, that it's completely logical that you'd have the same end result and that the descendant nodes would inherit the new namespace. I also believe that the Jaxen has made the same misinterpretation which led to the implementation assuming the empty namespace when no namespace is specified. As much as I wish the XPath docs stated what the default namespace for XPath processing should be, I haven't found anything. I still believe, however, that there is more merit and logic in using the context node's namespace rather than the empty namespace, and that there is no specification backing for using the empty namespace as the default namespace. In regard to me disagreeing with Edwin's statement that attributes must be specifically declared in a namespace. I'd quote the XML spec in saying, "Default namespace declarations do not apply directly to attribute names; the interpretation of unprefixed attributes is determined by the element on which they appear." My interpretation of this is that default namespaces don't apply DIRECTLY to, but they can apply indirectly to attributes. The attribute has the same namespace as the element unless specified otherwise, and there's no reason that the element couldn't be using the default namespace in scope. In regard to the quote, I believe that "The namespace name for an unprefixed attribute name always has no value." does not imply that the attribute has no namespace, but that it has no "namespace name" which I believe must have different meaning. --Evan Edwin Dankert wrote: > Attributes always need to be specifically declared in a namespace. > > "If there is a default namespace declaration in scope, the expanded > name corresponding to an unprefixed element name has the URI of the > default namespace as its namespace name. If there is no default > namespace declaration in scope, the namespace name has no value. The > namespace name for an unprefixed attribute name always has no value. > In all cases, the local name is local part (which is of course the > same as the unprefixed name itself)." > > http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/#defaulting > > Regards, > Edwin > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ dom4j-user mailing list dom4j-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dom4j-user
